Razor Fight at the Colored Club
A minor dispute between acquaintances escalates into a violent struggle that ends with a ruined suit and a dropped prosecution.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Newton Williams, known by everybody in the southern part of the city as 'Big Bill,' had trouble with Charles Wilson, who drives for the Standard Furniture Company, in the rooms of the Colored Club, at the corner of Washington street and Washington alley, last night, and the latter slashed at him with a razor. Williams beat a retreat and escaped with a slight scratch on his neck, but the condition of his 'Sunday-go-to-meeting coat' was terrible to behold. The left shoulder was carved in a semicircle and the back looked as if a Kansas cyclone had passed through it. He informed Detective Philbrick that he would not prosecute Wilson under any circumstances. The trouble originated over a game of cards some time ago.
“The left shoulder was carved in a semicircle and the back looked as if a Kansas cyclone had passed through it.”
This incident highlights the presence of social institutions and gathering spaces for Seattle’s Black community in the early 1890s, located in the historic heart of what would later be the Pioneer Square and Chinatown-International District nexus. It captures a fleeting moment of street-level conflict that persists in urban memory, even as the specific clubs and social dynamics of 1893 have long since vanished under layers of urban renewal.
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